Steam Train Coming
by tvfan69
Summary: A scene that i feel was missing from the first episode and i really wish we had seen. Just a very quick drabble that i've been meaning to write.
Insane.

That is the word Kendra had decided to use when describing the rout her life has suddenly decided to take.

Two months ago all she worried about was trying not to spill a customer's coffee and how many days she could possibly put off doing her laundry. But then Carter showed up and everything changed. He wasn't subtle, not in the least. Although to be fair he didn't exactly have time to be subtle considering she had already been attacked by Savage on more than one occasion and had no idea why. Now her life consisted of flying around on a time ship chasing Savage through history with Carter, a man who at times felt more like a stalker than a friend, constantly trying to jog her memory of incidents that to her sounded more like stories of far off lands rather than things that could've ever happened to her. Sometimes she would tell him that she remembered, that whatever he was talking about held some familiarity in her mind. But he always knew she was lying, just trying to get him to shut up and give it a rest for the night. Sometimes he didn't say anything, just stopped talking and went to bed. But most of the time he would call her out on it, tell her to stop lying to him. She would fight back, and tell him that she just couldn't remember and that he needed to get it through his thick skull that maybe she just can't remember the way he does.

But right now she'd give anything to remember Aldus.

He's lying right here in the med bay of the ship, asleep but still alive. He's her son, impossible as it may seem she knows it's true. She doesn't want to admit it but she knows how today will end, and she keeps wishing she'd had more time with him. She's his mother, but she can't for the life of her remember anything about him and she swears it's killing her. She wants to remember everything she ever knew about him. She wants to remember the day he was born, the day he started walking, his first word, his first day of school, that day at the fair he showed her a picture of. She's long since sat herself down in a chair at his side, holding his hand in hers, and as these thoughts consume her mind she starts to cry. She knows that she shouldn't feel this guilty but she does. She can't remember her own son; she was able to remember Carter, or rather Joe, giving her that stupid ring but she couldn't care less about that if she tried. Right now the only thing she wants to remember is Aldus.

Maybe her son was somehow reading her thoughts, after everything that's happened to her recently it wouldn't be the weirdest thing. He woke up and the moment he did she took back one of her hands and wiped her eyes.

"Hey," she said to him with a genuine smile and a crack in her voice. "How are you feeling?" She asked as the tears still filled her eyes. He didn't answer her with words so much as he did with a gentle squeeze to her hand and upon feeling that her sobs became impossible to fight off. "I'm sorry," she cried, wiping her eyes in vain. "I'm sorry I'm trying to remember you but-"

"Shh, no don't worry about that." He said to her gently, "Just seeing you, that's enough for me." He assured her and although she smiled she still cried, because it isn't enough for her.

"I'm so sorry," she said again.

"No don't be sorry, don't be sorry." He told her and she could hear his voice getting weaker. He was struggling to focus, struggling to hold on, but he was fighting for it because he needed just a few more minutes with her. "When I was a child, I remember I once asked you how you were able to remember your past lives. You told me that'd be a better question for my father." His face brightened a little at the memory, "You said that sometimes you felt like dad could summon his memories at will, but for you something would just trigger it." He further explained and Kendra was listening intently, "It was never something that you would think, and some days it was even out of the blue completely. But if the memory you saw was detailed enough you could take a piece of it and use it to remember what happened next, and before you knew it you were untangling the story of a whole other life." He said and before she could've reacted Carter, who had been standing around the corner listening for a while now, came walking in.

"Rip's still making repairs," he informed them because really he had nothing else to say.

Kendra nodded as he came and stood behind her, and she allowed him to place his hands on her shoulders. Aldus looked up at him with a grateful smile and he only looked back with a look of sympathy, like Kendra he also felt guilty that he hadn't remembered the boy. With the room silent he started humming a tune he had heard somewhere; somewhere he couldn't remember.

Kendra heard the wordless melody Carter was humming, and suddenly she wasn't in the med bay.

* * *

 _She saw herself, though not quite herself. She was in a dark bedroom and was walking carefully as so not to step on anything. There was something in her arms, something that was both light and heavy at the same time. It was Aldus, only about six years old with his arms locked securely around her neck as she sang to him._

 _"Barboori rye harye a Barboori jeh Barboori hchamil Shukur woo sheh." She sang in a soft voice as she felt her shin lightly bump against the edge of the wooden bed. "Time to get down Aldus," she said gently to the boy who was half asleep in her arms._

 _"But I'm scared mommy," Aldus protested and she felt herself rolling her eyes, mentally cursing Joe's name for having told their six year old about one of their more gruesome deaths. He claimed to have left out the details but obviously he didn't leave out enough, in fact she would've preferred he didn't tell the story at all._

 _"There's nothing to be scared of," she assured her baby as she lay him down in the bed, "We will always protect you," She promised as she ran her hands gently through his very short hair._

 _"But what about you?" He asked and she sighed, she couldn't promise anything about herself and Joe, they don't exactly have the best track record with Savage. But she smiled anyway,_

 _"Be it in this life or another, we will always love you." She promised and with that she began to sing again._

* * *

"What song is that?" She asked Carter, turning to face him for the first time since he entered the room. He looked at her with wide and confused eyes as he searched his memory, his very extensive memory.

"I don't know," He finally answered, "I've never been able to remember the words."

"That's because they're Arabic," Kendra said quickly, remembering how Carter had once said he had trouble remembering their first life; their names and a few brief memories of being together being all he could ever really get. She then turned her attention back to Aldus, who looked like he was losing the battle to keep his eyes open, and began to sing. "Barboori rye harye a Barboori jeh Barbo-" she stopped when her son closed his eyes and she felt his hand go limp in hers. In that moment all the tears returned to her eyes and as she let them fall Carter bent down behind her, wrapping his arms around her and she turned and cried into his chest.

They stayed like that for what felt like eternity but yet somehow not long enough. He held her tight against him as she sobbed into his chest, but he kept his eyes fixed past her. On the dead man laying in the medical bed, his son.

* * *

 **Author's Note: Hey so just a quick disclaimer, the song Kendra starts singing is an Egyptian song called "Steam Train Coming", which is what i named this drabble after. I figured it was appropriate since Aldus seems liked the kind of guy who would've liked trains as a kid, even though Kendra probably stopped speaking arabic fluently many lives before Aldus... i don't know but i could only find four egyptian lullabies online and frankly the other three didn't fit so for whatever reason she knows that song.**


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